Advisers increasingly rely on index funds or robo platforms to manage their clients’ investments, rather than sift through individual stocks to buy and sell them. Study after study seems to reinforce the belief that active portfolio managers do not outperform big, prepackaged baskets of stocks.

Just don’t tell Scott Snider.

Snider, a certified financial planner in Jacksonville, Fla., has no beef with low-cost index funds. But he’s an avid stock picker at heart.

“I’m always looking for new companies to add,” Snider said. “I see stocks as a way to buy something that’s mispriced, and it’s good to buy at a discount. With some mutual funds, you own stocks that aren’t mispriced. They may even be overpriced.”

Snider, 33, started his firm Mellen Money Management in 2016. During a 6 ½-year stint as an adviser working for a bank, he came to realize the advantages of selecting stocks and embracing a buy-and-hold strategy.

Reviewing client accounts in that job, he was struck by the wealth generated by patient investors with a fondness for dividend-paying stocks. A bank customer who had accumulated $1 million in General Mills
GIS, +1.16%
stock told Snider, “People won’t stop eating cereal.”

“He held a much larger concentration in a position than I was taught,” Snider recalled. “But it got me thinking.”

He began dabbling in stocks on his own. Soon, he was hooked.

Today, Snider explains to clients that he views stocks as a key piece of a well-rounded portfolio. Depending on each person’s age, risk tolerance and other factors, he might invest 10% to 20% of assets in individual equities. He parks the rest mostly in index funds and other passive investments.

Many of Snider’s peers — advisers in their late 20s and 30s—flock to passive instruments such as index funds and ETFs to allocate their clients’ assets. As online portfolio management tools go mainstream (even Fidelity offers its Fidelity Go “digital first” service), advisers are using automated robo platforms more than ever.

Thanks to the algorithms that drive robos’ performance, advisers can help clients invest in groupings of stocks (by sector, risk level, etc.) — and automatically rebalance their portfolio — at low cost and with minimal time expended. The upshot is many advisers no longer pick stocks at all.

Snider opts for what he describes as “good, boring, dividend payers” such as utilities and consumer staples such as Procter & Gamble
PG, +0.86%
. For those willing to take more risk, he might throw in a few high-beta selections such as Mobileye
US:MBLY
— a winner after Intel’s recent announcement to buy it — and Under Armour
UAA, +2.30%
— a former highflier that hit the skids.

Setting realistic expectations is a vital part of his job. If clients assume he will trounce the market averages year after year, he disabuses them of that notion.

“Trying to beat the benchmarks is a crazy game,” he said. “I tell clients they have to think long-term, not get caught up in day-to-day or month-to-month or year-to-year.”

Nevertheless, many clients initially question Snider’s intent to pick stocks and express what he describes as “a common surprised reaction.” Perhaps that’s because the tide is heading the other way: Investors have pulled $330 billion from active U.S. mutual funds and exchange-traded funds in the past 15 months as passive products like index funds gained $765.5 billion, according to Morningstar.

In time, however, clients often share Snider’s affinity for stocks. Better yet, they become more engaged in the investment process.

“There’s a value in clients knowing exactly what they own,” he said. “When they see a company’s name, it’s a much easier conversation when the market goes down. They tend to understand a stock better than they understand a mutual fund or ETF.”

Snider acknowledges that his commitment to stocks can hamper his ability to grow his practice. He’s a diligent researcher of potential buys, and analyzing a company’s fundamentals takes time away from prospecting and other business tasks.

To manage his time, Snider allots chunks of Monday and Friday to conduct intensive research. This frees him to focus on client service and other aspects of his practice the rest of the week.

He also adopts a flexible attitude. A few clients reject the idea of owning handpicked stocks, so Snider accommodates them.

“You have to be open-minded to what they want to accomplish and fit it into your philosophy and approach,” he said. “You want to make them comfortable.”

For others, the allure of owning certain stocks brings them to Snider in the first place. He recalls meeting an investor in his 60s who told his former adviser to buy rail company CSX
CSX, +3.49%
. The adviser replied, “I’m sorry, but buying individual stock just isn’t something that we do.”

Suffice it to say, he’s now Scott Snider’s satisfied client.

This story was first published on April 15, 2017.

Morey Stettner is a writer in Portsmouth, N.H. He’s the author of five business books, including ”Skills for New Managers,” published by McGraw Hill. Email him at m.stettner@comcast.net.

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